Committee Hearings

Hearings are held by standing and special committees of the House and Senate about particular issues of concern or about proposed legislation. In legislative history research, the hearings about proposed legislation are typically the most useful, because they often provide information about the purpose or expected effect of a particular piece of legislation.

It is important to note, that hearings are not held on all proposed legislation and that not all hearings are published. In addition, hearings relevant to a particular piece of legislation may have been held and published during a session of Congress prior to the one in which the law was eventually enacted.

- Federal News Service(LEGIS;FEDNEW): includes a few congressional hearings since 1988 that relate to a major news story.

- National Narrowcast Network Transcripts (LEGIS;NNNTRN): provides transcripts of select congressional hearings from October 1993 through July 2000.

ProQuest Congressional (access: restricted to Hastings students, faculty, and staff): This subscription Internet database includes the full-text for only a limited number of recent hearings.

Hearings Available from Government WebsitesGPO FDsys A limited number of hearings from the 99th Congress (1985) through the most recent Congress are available at GPO FDsys. House Committee Hearings - Selected recent house hearings are organized by committee and available at this site. Hearings Available in Printat Hastings

Hearings from the 94th Congress (1975) to 112th Congress (2012) are in the 6th Floor Stacks

- Title (e.g., "E-Commerce: The Case of Online Wine Sales and Direct Shipment"). The hearings for each committee are organized alphabetically by title.

Note: To find the congress, chamber, committee, and title of a particular hearing, you may need to use the CIS indexes listed above, or ProQuest Congressional, or the Hastings Online Library Catalog at http://hopac.uchastings.edu/search.

Searching Hint: If you've looked everywhere, and can't find a hearing, put the information into Google Book Search. Google Book Search is scanning some Congressional hearings.Hearings Available on Microfiche

All of the hearings listed in the CIS indexes mentioned in the Indexes and Finding Aids section above, are available on microfiche in Micrographics. To locate a hearing, you need the CIS year and the CIS number assigned to each hearing. Please contact a Reference Librarian if you need help.